Couples Counseling for Abusive Relationships

I wish I would have read and understood this many years ago: couples counseling is not intended for marriages where abuse is a factor. Here is how author Lundy Bancroft explains it in his book Why Does He Do That?

"Attempting to address abuse through couples therapy is like wrenching a nut the wrong way; it just gets even harder to undo than it was before. Couples therapy is designed to tackle issues that are mutual. It can be effective for overcoming barriers to communication, for untangling the childhood issues that each partner brings to a relationship, or for building intimacy. But you can't accomplish any of these goals in the context of abuse. There can be no positive communication when one person doesn't respect the other and strives to avoid equality. You can't take the leaps of vulnerability involved in working through early emotional injuries while you are feeling emotionally unsafe -- because you are emotionally unsafe. And if you succeed in achieving greater intimacy with your abusive partner, you will soon get hurt even worse than before because greater closeness means greater vulnerability for you."

I would add that any marriage program such as counseling, books, workshops, mentorship, and so on, must have a firm grasp on abuse what it looks like, how it works, and an appropriate response, meaning it needs to be shut down until the primary issue is resolved. There was one counselor we met with during a particularly difficult season and I didn't have the courage to explain our situation to her for a number of sessions. When I finally gathered up the ability to suggest that we had a serious problem with our marriage, she nearly yelled, "Bullshit! Bullshit!"  and proceeded to blast me for even suggesting that I didn't have any responsibility in a marriage that wasn't working. I don't recall the exact words I said to her, but I recall that was very difficult to open up to begin with and she tore into me. Christian counselor, by the way.

We have participated in very informative marriage events, but they do not address the primary issue and in fact, only provided additional ammunition to be used to put the wife "in her place". It increases the dynamic of the woman needing to try harder to be the "right" person and to do the "right" thing so as to not upset her husband. The imbalance of this type of relationship increases because additional blame is placed on the wife, by the counselor, the husband, or the wife puts it on herself, and responsibility and focus comes off of the primary issue. This is one reason women stay in these types of relationships; they believe if they just try harder or try again or try longer or try the next idea that it might just be the turning point of the marriage.

The author goes on to say, "Change in abusers comes only… from completely stepping out of the notion that his partner plays any role in causing his abuse of her. An abuser also has to stop focusing on his feelings and his partner's behavior, and look instead at her feelings and his behavior. Couples counseling allows him to stay stuck in the former. In fact, to some therapists, feelings are all that matters, in reality it's more or less irrelevant. In this context, therapist may turn to you and say, "But he feels abused by you, too.' Unfortunately, the more an abusive man is convinced that his grievances are more or less equal to yours, the less the chance that he will ever overcome his attitudes."

The point the author emphasizes and one point I want to express clearly, "Abuse is not caused by bad relationship dynamics."

Beware of any counseling scenario that includes the safety agreement; they're meaningless, "because abusers feel no obligation to honor them; virtually every abuser I've ever worked with feels entitled to break his word if he has a 'good enough reason', which includes any time that he is really upset by his partner."

Couples counseling is not designed to address the issue of abuse; the woman comes away from it feeling further violated, and those trained in couples counseling aren't necessarily trained to effectively tackle the issue of abuse. And that means, not getting any counseling would be better than couples counseling.